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Conquering Calradia
The main objective of the game is complete dominance. This is achieved by eliminating all the other teams. A team will be eliminated when you capture all of their castles and towns. Usually the faction will linger around for a while and their lords will have very small parties and it can be a nuisance because their small parties allow them to run away from you when you approach; causing them to raid all of your villages without any threats. Note: you don't have to go for this goal. You may set any goal you feel like and the game will still be very fun. For example: see how far you can get without hiring any soldiers or try to defeat an entire castle with just heroes. 'Steps to Follow:' There are a bunch of things that you can do before beginning your journey to being the King of Calradia. They are not necessary but will greatly help in the long run. Note: These steps are just a rough outline of strong strategies you can use to try to win. You can win without these steps but if you ever get stuck, this is a very solid way to victory. 'Building a Steady Income' Find a way to gain large amounts of money at any time you need it. Ultimately, you want to buy an enterprise in every town in the game. The best places to start are: Curaw and Dhirim since you can buy an ironworks at each of them for 3500 denars and make about 300-500 every week from them. Once you have all the enterprises, you will get somewhere around 8000 denars every week. The best bandits to kill for money are sea raiders. If your faction is not at war, it is ideal to kill these bandits. However, if your faction is at war, you can try to defeat enemy lords with the hope that you will capture them and sell them for ransom. They can be worth anywhere from 1500-6000 (Kings are worth 9000-17000). 'Creating a Soldier Farm' You need to be able to easily replenish soldiers while you are at war so that you can protect your kingdom from enemy armies. Being able to recruit a lot of new soldiers quickly creates room for casualties during fights. You won't have to worry about losing a lot of troops during a tough fight. If you have a negative reputation with a village, they will not give you recruits. If you have somewhere between 0 and 10 reputation, they will give you 0-7 recruits when you go to them and 0 if you are at war with the faction that owns the village. If you are above 10, however, they will give you recruits even if you are at war and you will get more recruits than before. At 20, you have a chance to get tier 2 units, 40, tier 3, etc. Keep in mind, if your reputation with the village improves at all at any time, and you just recruited soldiers, more soldiers will be available for recruitment right away. A handy trick is to talk to the villagers and see if any of them are out of a job. If they are, you can give them 300 denars and your reputation will increase by 1; you can recruit volunteers again. The best soldiers in the game are: Infantry: Nord Huscarls Archers: Rhodok Sharpshooters Cavalry: Swadian Knights Any units you wish to use, however, can be used to replace these units. You should just aim to have a good top tier unit for each role. Rhodok Sergeants, Vaegir Marksmen, Sarranid Mamlukes would be a very powerful set of units as well as the best units. They are second-rank units in their role, and they are slighty cheaper than best units. Note: Any units can be used in your army. It is very beneficial to hire the prisoners of lords you defeat. However, don't bother hiring units that are not the correct type of unit for your current army. Don't bother hiring archers and sergeants when you are using your knights. For example, hiring Khergit Lancers when you are using knights is a very good idea. You can even put them in the front of your army by moving them up in the party list so they can absorb the damage in the initial charge. 'Founding a Kingdom' It is best if you have your own kingdom (and the most fun). You can choose any name for it that you want. Also, you can get a banner even if you didn't join a faction earlier. Plus, you absolutely need a castle in order to win. To defeat a castle, create an army of Rhodok sharpshooters. Attack any castle (a ladder castle unless you have really high engineering) and tell your sharpshooters to hold position at a good distance from the castle. (Khergits are the easiest to defeat. Swadians next.) Let them fire all their bolts and then charge up the ramp with your heroes and fight till you die. When you die, you will automatically retreat and lost some sharpshooters so you can go replenish them at your soldier farms if you like. Repeat this process until you are victorious. Keep in mind that castles that have been taken recently will have a weak garrison. You are very likely to lose this castle to the faction's army. So be prepared to just leave it for them to take. You can take it back easily because the garrison will be weak. Eventually, the faction will be at war with another faction and will leave you alone. Note: an alternative strategy is to help a claimant take their kingdom. Make sure the kingdom is already really small. Ask for a castle that you think will be a good starting place for your kingdom. When you are done taking the kingdom, empty your castle and siege it. It will instantly lose as soon as you finish building the ladders. 'Beating Other Factions' The faction that you took the castle from is very likely to declare war on you even after they failed to take the castle back multiple times. So try to eliminate them first. A castle is necessary because you can put troops in them and they will only cost half the wages. This allows you to switch your army at any time without disbanding all your troops. To beat enemy armies, you should use knights. Use your Swadian Knights to attack the enemies. You can win battles that are 4:1 against you very easily with Swadian Knights. Once you get to battle advantage -8 to -10, you are in trouble and could end up losing. When a faction declares war on you (or you declare war on them), hunt down their lords. Keep in mind that all enemy units are dismounted when fighting in villages but your units won't be (making knights infinitely better). If you find their king, try to take them out so their tactics level won't affect your battle advantage in the army fight. If their army groups up and sieges your castle, and there is no way you can fight the whole thing, just wait for them to enter your castle. But catch the last bunch of lords that enter. Enemy kings always enter last and they always have the most troops. After defeating them, help your castle win the battle. With your massive income from your enterprises, your castle can hold easily about 300 top tier units (you should have huscarls and sharpshooters in your castle). In a castle fight, the total units that die to end the fight is about 300. So the enemy army may be alive even after the first battle. If you are destroying your enemy, wait till about 280 of them are dead and then get yourself killed. This will force another 300 enemies to come into the castle to get destroyed as well. (WARNING: Only do this if you have good first aid and enough health to fight another battle afterward.) When the castle fight is over, storm out with your knights and finish off their army. Keep in mind that all enemy lords will be wounded and that much of their army will also be. (Lords have the skill Tactics; this causes fights against them to be much more difficult). 'Get Lords to Join You' You need at least one Lord on your team. Due to tax inefficiency, you will not be able to sustain more garrisons. It is best if you stick with just one garrison. As for lords, don't get too many because they will start to hate you as more fiefs are given away. The easiest thing to do is just keep one town that you like and give away all the villages for that town and all the castles and towns you capture. To get more Lords to join your team, you can send out all the heroes in your party to go try stir up things in the other factions. This will usually get a Lord or two for you - provided that you have enough land. You don't need very many Lords since you can defeat every team in the game with the above strategy. Keep in mind that Lords that have joined you are very unlikely to participate in campaigns because they will be busy defending their fiefs. You mostly just need them for a little defense for your villages and to fill up the garrisons of castles. 'Control the Enemies' It is ideal that all the other factions remain small and weak. To achieve this, avoid eliminating factions - save them if you need to by attacking a faction that is attacking the weak faction. This way, the lords will never all be together and a bunch of weaker armies will try but fail to take your castle. 'Conquer' Begin declaring war on factions. Use knights to wipe out their armies and then sharpshooters (and maybe some huscarls if you want) to capture all their towns. Target towns first since they have your enterprises. Use the same tactics that were used to start your kingdom. The hardest faction to defeat with the sharpshooter strategy is the Nords. Then next being the Rhodoks. These may require more brute force so use a lot of huscarls or just keep farming up a new army to attack with. Keep in mind that once you eliminate a faction's main army, they will take a long time to rebuild it. The lords will run around with small parties of tier 1 to tier 3 units and can be easily defeated with any army you have. You should aim at their campaign army first, try to lure them out, once their campaign army is beaten, repeat it every two weeks. This should keep the other faction down hard enough for your lords to win most fights on their own. Another way to keep your enemies weakened after defeating their main army is to split up your force, attacking and burning down as many villages as possible. This affects the enemy's recruitment and income. Repeating the attack/raids every two weeks should make your enemy's beg for peace within a month or two, ending the war in your favor. Keep in mind that you will lose relations with your current lords when you assign a new fief, so don’t be too greedy and conquer bits at a time, keeping your internal relations at an all time high. If you conquer too fast, you will see deserting lords, which will harm you even more than your enemy will. 'Items and Skills' The equipment and skills you choose are entirely up to you because they are not too important if you use the above guidelines and your skills should be chosen to fit your play style. However, there are some suggestions that you may choose to follow and they are listed below. 'Player' 'Skills' Basically any skills will be good to have. The most useful skill in the game is training. It is a good idea to get somewhere from 3 to 5 points in this skill so you can train soldiers without getting them killed. With your soldier farm and training skills combined, you will be able to make a new top tier army in about an in-game week. Some skills that are handy: Leadership - Good for getting a larger army and keeping it happy. Prisoner Management - Good for making a bit more money. Sea Raiders are worth about 100 denars. Path Finding - Gets you out of sticky situations on the map. Note: All the 'party leader' skills can be given to your companions but you will not get the small bonus. (+1 if the skill is 2-4, +2 if it's 5-7, +3 if it's 8-9, and +4 if it's 10) 'Equipment' Get anything you want that suits your play style. Usually it is good to get a ranged weapon so you can use it in castle sieges but you can just leave it in your inventory for other fights. You can go for a bow with the Power Draw skill or you can just use a crossbow. Throwing weapons are not the best choice since they generally have less ammo but they can still be useful if you use throwing daggers and have a lot of power throw and throwing proficiency. In general, the game is easier if you just buy strong armor since it is really hard to not get hit. It is also easier to use a Charger over any other horse since it will almost never die before you do - even when you have plate armor. Heavy armour makes your character run slower on the ground but since you will want to be mounted most of the time, you will be better off with it anyway. 'Companions' 'Skills' Again, their skills will largely be based on how you like to play. However, the Training skill stacks with each person so it is ideal if you can get all your companions to have 3 to 5 training as well as yourself. Since your companions will have the same AI as your other soldiers, they are bound to fail in combat. If you give them a lot of strength, you can expect them to kill a few enemies before going down. 'Equipment' Since the AI does not allow soldiers to do clever move, such as kite, it is best just to give them the strongest armor that you can find. This will help them last during fights and they will kill a lot more enemies. The AI is also particularly bad at using polearms so avoid giving them spears of any kind. You should give them a ranged weapon as well since they will be very effective in castle sieges with them. Since they can't die, they are ideal for taking castles without casualties. Ideally, they should have a ranged weapon, a shield, and some sort of melee weapon. (Anything but a polearm should be good) You want them with this equipment so you can use them like your rhodok sharpshooters (shield until in position then start firing) and so that they can fight in close combat when they run out of arrows or when you are using knights. They also do well with this equipment if you stand them in front of your archer army so enemies that come close will be taken care of by them while your archers keep firing. Category:Kingdom Category:Win Category:Tactics Category:Gameplay